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Spiritual Evolution in Pride and Prejudice
During the process of manifestation, each of these sets of determinates splits into three poises -- subject, object and act or experience. For example, Self-conscious Being becomes Being as subject, being as object to its own perception and the act of perceiving or experiencing itself. Being as Creator becomes the creator, the creation and the act of creating. Knowledge becomes the knower, the object of knowledge and the experience of knowing. Love becomes the lover, the object of adoration and the act of loving. In manifestation, all eight determinates and their opposites in each of the three poises are present in varying degrees in every form, force and action. The process of involution is a movement from the positive to the negative term of each determinate. The process of evolution is a movement from negative to positive term of each determinate in manifestation. The evolution progresses by a meeting, interaction and reconciliation of these determinants, raising the level of harmony between the involved elements to successively higher levels as they evolve. Eliza is evolving along a continuum on all eight dimensions. In Eliza, beauty is mixed with falsehood, goodwill with animosity, love with intense dislike, a sense of mastery with a sense of helplessness, a detached objectivity about those around her with an involved subjectivity regarding her own thoughts and actions. She is attracted to Wickham’s Beauty but unable to recognize his Falsehood. She is the beneficiary of Charlotte’s Goodness but capable of ill will toward Darcy. She has to progress from the prejudices of egoistic resentment against Darcy for being slighted and insulted to the detached calm of accepting what she and her family are, and the fate that life imposes on them. She has to progress from acceptance of the falsehoods of Wickham’s pleasing beautiful form and his flattering attentions to the truth about Wickham and her own family inheritance. The movement from falsehood to truth requires her to elevate her consciousness from vital-physical surface attraction to mental objectivity and knowledge. She has to move from hate against Darcy for his sense of superiority to love and gratitude for his accepting her in spite of what she is. She has to pass through the pain of Lydia’s elopement in order to find the joy of recognizing her true feelings for Darcy and releasing the will to win him. Eliza’s inner evolution is made possible by the action of the eight determinants and their opposites in the world around her. Goodness comes to her from Charlotte to help her emerge from the narrowness of her egoistic family position to discover the truth of her destiny as Darcy’s wife. Eliza is endowed with Beauty and, therefore, she responds without question to beauty in Wickham. Beauty and Falsehood come to her together in Wickham so that she can discover Truth of herself and move from seeking beauty of physical-vital form to mental beauty of character. Delight is a native endowment of her personality. Pain comes in the form of the elopement to awaken a deeper awareness in her and release her energy for action. Knowledge presents itself to her through Darcy to awaken her to Self-knowledge. Love comes to her from Darcy to help her shed the egoistic smallness of her social position and prejudice. Will comes to her in Lydia as initiative for evolution, which releases Eliza’s will to finally take initiative toward Darcy by expressing her gratitude. Ignorance comes to her as obsequious Collins and overbearing Lady Catherine, who mistake social position to be the measure of value, rather than human character. The process is illustrated by the dynamics of interaction between Eliza and Darcy. During the scene at Rosings Park, Eliza is playing the piano and talking with Fitzwilliam when Darcy approaches them. Darcy’s close observation of her playing raises anxiety in her that he intends to intimidate her. Her anxiety is raised by her subconscious feeling of inferiority, which expresses on the surface as irritation. The irritation releases the boldness of her personality and energizes her to aggressively confront him. It releases her will. From Darcy’s side, Lady Catherine’s vulgar, offensive behavior has made him acutely conscious of the cultural inferiority of his own relations. That knowledge meets his knowledge of the inferiority of Eliza’s family and reconciles with it, by making her connections seem much more approachable (less condemnable). These conflicting forces continue to interact when Darcy proposes to her a few days later and subsequently while they are separated. By the time they meet again at Pemberley, Darcy has consciously overcome his mental reservations but does not know whether Eliza will accept him. Eliza has subconsciously overcome her reservations, but cannot imagine he still wants her. They meet and establish a pleasant surface harmony that is attractive to both. But beneath the surface, Darcy’s new mental attitude has not yet translated into vital will. Eliza’s surface acceptance has not overcome her sense of social distance. Lydia’s elopement comes as an external determinant to establish a harmony at the vital level. It provides Eliza with on opportunity to express a confidence in Darcy comparable to that offered by him when he disclosed to her Georgiana’s near elopement with Wickham. It provides Darcy with an opportunity to prove his affection and acceptance of her family in the most tangible terms. It abolishes all remaining prejudice that Eliza harbors regarding Darcy’s sense of social superiority. Lydia’s disclosure of Darcy’s role provides Eliza with the essential knowledge she needs to recognize the change in him. Eliza’s initiative to offer gratitude provides Darcy with the knowledge he needs that she has overcome her objections to him. Conclusion The brief comments in this article are intended to illustrate how the truths of spirituality can be perceived in the story and in our own lives. The overall intention of this paper has not been to project any particular interpretation of Jane Austen’s marvelous work of fiction. It has been rather to illustrate an approach to literary criticism based on the premise that art reflects life and that literature is a wonderful mirror of our real human condition. The ultimate purpose of both literature and its criticism should be to help us discover a greater knowledge and delight in our own living, growing and spiritual evolution, which Sri Aurobindo termed the adventure of consciousness and joy. Footnotes ---- |width=5 | |style="background:#FB7701;" width=5 | |- |style="background:#FB7701;" width=5 | |http://images.wikia.com/humanscience/images/e/ef/Icon.gif | | | |align="right"|http://images.wikia.com/humanscience/images/e/ef/Icon.gif |style="background:#FB7701;" width=5 | |- |style="background:#FB7701;" colspan=7 height=1| |} http://server3.web-stat.com/4/humanscience.gif [http://www.web-stat.com/checkstats1.htm H] Category: Life Category: Literature Category: Pride & Prejudice